They were caught again at the Lake Otis light. She admired the raven-stealing-the-sun-moon-and-stars sculpture on the southwest corner of the intersection, the only decent piece of public art in the entire city. A real raven perched on top of a light pole and directed traffic with a series of boisterous clicks, croaks, and caws.
“She made a move on me,” Johnny said at last, face still turned away.
“Yeah,” Kate said. “Tell me about it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Tell me anyway. I mean it, Johnny, this is important.”
Johnny had gone into the living room and introduced himself to Tracy who had made room for him on the couch. “At first she seemed really nice. She’s a senior at Bartlett, and we even know some of the same people from when I went to middle school when I was staying with Mom, kids who are at Bardett now.” He fell silent.
“Then what?”
His voice was muffled. “Then she-then she-she kind of scootched over next to me, and the next thing I know she’s kissing me. Well, I kissed her back!” He whipped around and glared at her.
“Okay,” Kate said. “Then what happened?”
He looked away again. “She started touching me. I mean really touching me, Kate. God, her father was right in the next room. And you, too!” His voice scaled up with his indignation.
Kate drove a while in silence. Sexual promiscuity was a classic symptom of an abused child. At last she sighed. “Johnny, I think maybe she might have been molested.”
“Well, that doesn’t give her the right to molest me!”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I don’t ever want to see her again. If you have to go over there again, you go without me.”
“Understood.”
They went the rest of the way downtown in silence. Kate pulled into a reserved space in back of the building.
Johnny cleared his throat and said, “Won’t we get a ticket?” Kate laughed.
13
Did you manage to scare up Duffy’s arresting officer?“ Brendan was a big-bellied man with thinning red hair he didn’t bother to coerce into a comb-over. Shrewd blue eyes looked out over a fleshy nose and a mouth that was always kicked up on one side in something between a sneer and a smile, kind of like Elvis, only with more charm. His suit was rumpled, his loosened tie stained with what might have been breakfast, and his enormous feet, crossed on the desk between them, were clad in a pair of waffle-soled, lace-up leather boots that looked suitable for climbing Denali, if they’d had any heel left to them.
By contrast, his office was neat to the point of making your teeth ache. This was an office that would not tolerate any document misfiled, any folder mislabeled, any filing cabinet overcrowded. There wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on any horizontal surface, and Kate got the feeling that if Brendan had the temerity to track mud into the room that a broom and a mop would follow immediately on his heels. His pencils were razor sharp, none of his pens were out of ink, and his telephone sat at a precise angle from his computer, with the fax, printer, and PDA cradle lined up like soldiers next to it. “Got a new secretary, Brendan,” Kate said, and it wasn’t a question.
He nodded, his expression of woe belied by the look of relief Kate glimpsed in his eyes. “Yeah, Janice, you saw her on the way in. I live in fear. About the arresting officer.”
Kate didn’t like the expression on his face. “What?”
“Well, he’s kind of not around.”
“Define not around. Is he retired?”
“Sort of.”
“Oh, hell. Is he dead?”
“Might as well be.”
“Brandon.”
He flapped a hand. “Okay, all right. He’s at Highland Mountain.”
Kate’s brows knit. “You mean he’s a corrections officer now?”
“No, I mean he’s an inmate.”
“Oh, please. Say you’re joking.”
“Nope. He got fired from the force a while back.”
“What for?”
“Making dirty movies with underage victims recruited from his case files.”
“Ick,” Johnny said.
“You said it, kid,” Brendan said. “Still, I don’t think we would have nailed him if he hadn’t been selling tapes off the Internet from his office computer.” He looked at Kate. “You know how it is sometimes. He was on the job too long, in sex crimes too long. Damn few can take it for more than five, six years. The smart ones get out before it gets to them.”
Kate rubbed her hands over her face. “Oh, crap. Not only have I got a body that’s six months old, now I’ve got an unreported child abuse and a cop in jail. This case just keeps getting better and better.”
Brendan sat up, his lips pursed together in a silent whistle. “Oh. Don’t believe I’d heard that. Okay, that’s makes for a horse of a different color. How may I help you, Kate?”
For a fat man, Brendan McCord sure moved quick, Johnny thought. Observing the tight, even expression on the big face across from him, of the leashed power and authority that the big body radiated, Johnny also thought it might be a good idea to get on and stay on Brandon’s good side. Like, for life.
“Can I talk to the officer?”
“I already did, made a phone call this morning. He says the girl was fortunate in her choice of relatives.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She was Harold Elwell Bannister’s granddaughter. You never heard me say that, of course, the record is naturally sealed as she was a juvenile.”
“Oh.” Harold Elwell Bannister was an old-time Alaskan, a stampeder who had stayed on after the gold rush to found a chain of grocery stores and subsequently to guide the footsteps of first territorial and then state governors. The Bannisters were a wealthy and historic Alaskan family, and Kate doubted there was a cop or a prosecutor, or more importantly a judge, in the state who wouldn’t have done their utmost to see that a crime against any relative of his did not go unavenged. “I see.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t like there was any doubt, though. There was semen residue, and they tested it for blood type. And there was an eyewitness who saw him make the snatch. She was out walking her dog. She was eighty-three and you know how dark it is winter mornings, but she ID’d him in a lineup. Girl was waiting for the school bus. Duffy had staked her out, and grabbed her up the one morning she was standing there alone.”
“Did he admit that?”
“Not to staking her out, but the cop is pretty sure that’s what happened. Still, the prosecutor had to fight for it, blood tests back then were pre-DNA, there was plenty of room for the defense to maneuver, and our eighty-three-year-old witness wore Coke-bottle glasses and failed to identify her own daughter in the courtroom.”
“But Duffy was found guilty anyway.”
Brendan shrugged and grinned. “The judge was a regular guest at Einar Bannister’s duck shack out on the Beluga flats every September.”
“Collusion,” Kate said. “Conspiracy. Also,” she added, “justice.”
Brendan sobered. “As close to it as the girl was going to get, I reckon.” He smiled, and Johnny felt a chill run up his spine. “Myself, I’m of the opinion that castration without benefit of anesthesia, followed by hanging, drawing, and quartering at high noon in the town square, televised live on all local stations with viewing made mandatory by all citizens either live or in living color, would be a more effective deterrent.”
Kate thought of Gary Drussell’s youngest daughter putting the moves on a boy she had met for the first time half an hour before, and said, “Sounds about right to me.”
Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Jeeze, you guys.”
“Sorry, kid,” Brendan said, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Thanks, Brendan,” Kate said. “I appreciate you coming in on your day off to help.”
“I have no days off. My pleasure.” He found a leer somewhere and produced it to effect. “Your tab’s piling up, Shugak.”